I used to post my thoughts and opinions on social media all the time. Almost compulsively. And now I just don't.

a new post for a new year and a renewed energy for writing

This quote from Godfather Part 1 “Never tell anybody outside the family what you’re thinking again” existed in a world before social media.

I used to update a blog regularly. Like every day. When I look back and remember, it really was an interesting time in my life. I didn’t have much going on, but I had a lot of time and I tried to use it as creatively as I could.

What kicked off my blogging was my quarterlife crisis. It was an era marked by my unemployment and later my underemployment where I was basically paid to wear dresses and sit at a desk at one dead-end personal assistant job after another. I didn’t have many friends outside of my doomed long-term live-in romantic relationship and my cat. Many hours were spent online.

Lonely, bored, and going nowhere, I would turn to my computer to type up some thoughts and blow off some steam and this made me feel like my life had meaning. At this point I didn’t consider myself a writer, but I was dedicated to updating my blog. I would spend hours reading and commenting on other people’s blogs to feel like I was part of a community. There was also the hope that leaving many comments would inspire others to check out my blog.

Writing a new post for my blogspot dot com blog gave me something to do, something to care about and spend time on. Honing my wordcraft was my daily practice, even when my posts would consist of complaints about whatever dumb fashion trend I happened to notice at whatever moment.

A blog post could be anything, the subject didn’t matter to me so long as I was writing. Sometimes I would recount my dreams and make the descriptions feel literary or cinematic, other times I wrote listicles of my favorite things: movies, rappers, albums, books. I even interviewed some artists whose work I enjoyed and were approachable enough to return my emails and be featured on my humble site.

Whatever the topic (much like this newsletter you’re currently reading) my blog was my own personal space to seek out my creativity and just see what happened when I set myself down and typed something up.

In my early 20s, before I started regularly updating my blogspot site, I was determined to become an Elite Yelper, so I did. My prolific Yelp presence started out of spite, to “get back” at a friend I had recently fallen out with (I just deleted half a paragraph explaining why the friendship dissolved but it’s not important, the point is that she was petty and snobby about her Yelp account and saw herself as a real restaurant critic and had on one occasion chosen to mock me in her review of a sushi place because I ordered a roll compared to her sophisticated nigiri, and I was determined to be pettier and have more friends and more reviews on Yelp than her). I reviewed everything, and I wasn’t shy about sharing my opinion.

My reviews were humorous and detailed, and sometimes scathing. In my immaturity, I didn’t consider that the businesses I wrote about might read my reviews. I wrote reviews for every business I went to, from my local coffee shop, to the bus stop I took to work, to the DMV. I had something like 1,000 reviews, probably more. As an “Elite Yelper” I got a badge on my profile and would get invited to special events. What started off as a spiteful action ended up being a pretty good decision.

Publishing these reviews, as silly as they were, was a really good practice for me to start working on my writing. And going to events and participating in online discussions enabled me to make friends with people in the community. It was a good four year run, but in 2012 I ended up deleting the account out of embarrassment. Some of my reviews were just too mean and too stupid.

As the years have passed, I guess I’ve gotten more self conscious about my online presence. I used to post my thoughts and opinions on social media all the time. Almost compulsively. And now I just don't.

Maybe it's because I'm older and somewhat wiser. Everyone doesn't need to know what I'm thinking about all the time.

Maybe it's because I just don't have anything to say, like I realized eventually that I'm not that smart and my takes on things aren't that well thought out or novel. There are more eloquent writers out there who are saying the same thing as me but in better way.

Maybe I figured out that not everyone needs to know how I feel about something. Some thoughts are best kept private, or there’s no reason for me to explain myself to the random public.

Whatever the case, the one objective thing is that I just don’t have the same amount of free time as I did.

It’s been a long time since I last posted on here. I resigned from my job and now I’m a fulltime stay-at-home mom. I do want to start updating this thing more regularly, and I will. I’m only just starting to get the hang of balancing my time while managing a household and a baby, but I feel like I’m going to make it work. I have a lot of writing projects I want to tackle and I’m excited to share more with you when the time is right.

I hope you’ve been doing well and are starting off this new year on a good foot. What have you been up to? Send me an email, I miss you!